In 2006, Prime Minister Harper remarked: “Canada’s environmental performance is, by most measures, the worst in the developed world. We’ve got big problems.”
Having acknowledged this glaring failing, an accountable, responsible government would have taken meaningful action to protect our fragile environment and the health and safety of Canadians, while building a vibrant green economy.
But the environment and sustainable development are not conservative priorities, and recent rankings of environmental performance clearly demonstrate this fact. The 2008 Climate Change Performance Index ranked Canada 56th of 57 countries in terms of tackling emissions. In 2009, the Conference Board of Canada ranked Canada 15th of 17 wealthy industrialized nations on environmental performance. In 2010, Simon Fraser University and the David Suzuki Foundation ranked Canada 24th of 25 OECD nations on environmental performance. And most recently, the Environmental Performance Index ranked Canada 37th of 132 countries on 22 performance indicators, and 96th and 102nd in terms of ecosystem vitality and climate change, respectively.
The bottom line is that our world-renowned natural heritage is at-risk, and being further imperilled by a government that is destroying 50 years of safeguards through Economic Action Plan 2012 — namely, severely cutting the budget to Environment Canada, gutting environmental legislation, canceling the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, silencing dissent from environmental non-governmental organizations, and continuing to muzzle government scientists — and in so doing, impacting our economy today and in the future.
Last summer, the government slashed forty-three percent of the budget of the federal environmental watchdog, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. This was followed by a plan to cut 700 scientists, a move which would have resulted in reduced ability to evaluate scientific issues, such as air quality, climate change, and water quality, and could potentially have lead to less-informed decision-making.
Later in the fall, the government planned to cut ozone monitoring despite the discovery of a two million square kilometre hole in the ozone layer over the Arctic earlier that spring, despite Canada’s being a world leader in Arctic research, and despite ozone being critical to life on Earth.
Ozone protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun, which causes skin cancer, cataracts, sunburns and local and whole-body immunosuppression. Without the ozone layer, life as we know it would not exist on our planet.
Policy makers, scientists, and the international community are therefore rightfully concerned that cuts to Environment Canada will keep Canada from meeting its international obligations to ozone assessment and monitoring studies.
Then in December, the government cowardly walked away from the Kyoto Protocol after attending the Durban climate change conference in South Africa, walked away from our moral and intergenerational responsibility, and abandoned the countries most vulnerable to climate change. These countries understand that: 2015 is already too late; the two-degree-Celsius stabilisation target will likely be missed; some developed countries remain insensitive to their predicament; some islands will likely become submerged; and their hopes for enhanced global support aiding their efforts have continually been disappointed.
But the government cannot walk away from Canada’s climate change wake-up calls, such as the 1998 ice storm, which cost $5.4 billion, and the 1996 Saguenay flood, which cost $1.7 billion. It cannot walk away from its abdication of leadership on issues related to climate change, specifically its performance in: meeting international climate commitments; setting science-based emissions targets; developing incentives for low-carbon technologies; reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and putting in place adaptation measures necessary to respond to the risks of climate change.
The government cannot walk away from killing Project Green, a comprehensive climate plan put in place by the previous Liberal government, which, according to independent third-party stakeholders, would have allowed Canada to achieve eighty percent of its Kyoto target. Unfortunately, the government has since reduced its greenhouse gas emissions target by a staggering ninety percent, and is on track to meet only a meagre twenty-five percent of its goal.
And now we have the latest attack — the 2012 budget, and its inaction plan for the environment. Budgets at Environment Canada and other investments on environmental protection and research are being reduced by hundreds of millions of dollars, while several tax incentives for the oil and gas sector, that the Minister of Finance’s own department recommended eliminating in a secret memo, are being maintained.
While the government talks of “streamlining” environmental assessments, it is, in fact, gutting the approvals process in order to fast-track development. We need development, but we need sustainable development — development that meets the needs of today without compromising those of the future.
In closing, it is absolutely negligent that the government, which inherited a legacy of balanced budgets, would sacrifice the environment and the health and safety of Canadians in order to satisfy one particular short-term private financial interest, and cover-up its own economic mismanagement.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Kirsty Duncan
Having acknowledged this glaring failing, an accountable, responsible government would have taken meaningful action to protect our fragile environment and the health and safety of Canadians, while building a vibrant green economy.
But the environment and sustainable development are not conservative priorities, and recent rankings of environmental performance clearly demonstrate this fact. The 2008 Climate Change Performance Index ranked Canada 56th of 57 countries in terms of tackling emissions. In 2009, the Conference Board of Canada ranked Canada 15th of 17 wealthy industrialized nations on environmental performance. In 2010, Simon Fraser University and the David Suzuki Foundation ranked Canada 24th of 25 OECD nations on environmental performance. And most recently, the Environmental Performance Index ranked Canada 37th of 132 countries on 22 performance indicators, and 96th and 102nd in terms of ecosystem vitality and climate change, respectively.
The bottom line is that our world-renowned natural heritage is at-risk, and being further imperilled by a government that is destroying 50 years of safeguards through Economic Action Plan 2012 — namely, severely cutting the budget to Environment Canada, gutting environmental legislation, canceling the National Roundtable on the Environment and the Economy, silencing dissent from environmental non-governmental organizations, and continuing to muzzle government scientists — and in so doing, impacting our economy today and in the future.
Last summer, the government slashed forty-three percent of the budget of the federal environmental watchdog, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency. This was followed by a plan to cut 700 scientists, a move which would have resulted in reduced ability to evaluate scientific issues, such as air quality, climate change, and water quality, and could potentially have lead to less-informed decision-making.
Later in the fall, the government planned to cut ozone monitoring despite the discovery of a two million square kilometre hole in the ozone layer over the Arctic earlier that spring, despite Canada’s being a world leader in Arctic research, and despite ozone being critical to life on Earth.
Ozone protects us from harmful ultraviolet radiation from the sun, which causes skin cancer, cataracts, sunburns and local and whole-body immunosuppression. Without the ozone layer, life as we know it would not exist on our planet.
Policy makers, scientists, and the international community are therefore rightfully concerned that cuts to Environment Canada will keep Canada from meeting its international obligations to ozone assessment and monitoring studies.
Then in December, the government cowardly walked away from the Kyoto Protocol after attending the Durban climate change conference in South Africa, walked away from our moral and intergenerational responsibility, and abandoned the countries most vulnerable to climate change. These countries understand that: 2015 is already too late; the two-degree-Celsius stabilisation target will likely be missed; some developed countries remain insensitive to their predicament; some islands will likely become submerged; and their hopes for enhanced global support aiding their efforts have continually been disappointed.
But the government cannot walk away from Canada’s climate change wake-up calls, such as the 1998 ice storm, which cost $5.4 billion, and the 1996 Saguenay flood, which cost $1.7 billion. It cannot walk away from its abdication of leadership on issues related to climate change, specifically its performance in: meeting international climate commitments; setting science-based emissions targets; developing incentives for low-carbon technologies; reducing greenhouse gas emissions; and putting in place adaptation measures necessary to respond to the risks of climate change.
The government cannot walk away from killing Project Green, a comprehensive climate plan put in place by the previous Liberal government, which, according to independent third-party stakeholders, would have allowed Canada to achieve eighty percent of its Kyoto target. Unfortunately, the government has since reduced its greenhouse gas emissions target by a staggering ninety percent, and is on track to meet only a meagre twenty-five percent of its goal.
And now we have the latest attack — the 2012 budget, and its inaction plan for the environment. Budgets at Environment Canada and other investments on environmental protection and research are being reduced by hundreds of millions of dollars, while several tax incentives for the oil and gas sector, that the Minister of Finance’s own department recommended eliminating in a secret memo, are being maintained.
While the government talks of “streamlining” environmental assessments, it is, in fact, gutting the approvals process in order to fast-track development. We need development, but we need sustainable development — development that meets the needs of today without compromising those of the future.
In closing, it is absolutely negligent that the government, which inherited a legacy of balanced budgets, would sacrifice the environment and the health and safety of Canadians in order to satisfy one particular short-term private financial interest, and cover-up its own economic mismanagement.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Kirsty Duncan
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